Here’s some more anti-Nielsen fodder for Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman today at his UBS Global Media & Communications Conference appearance: The TV ratings company is admitting that it made a mistake when estimating the number of kids who are watching TV compared with last year. Though not directly related to Dauman’s fight with Nielsen over the ratings decline at kids network Nickelodeon, it’s likely he will use the admission for an I-told-you-so moment: The CEO has been on the hot seat since September, when Nielsen first reported the unusually weak ratings, and now he’s got ammunition for his claim that the decline is a “blip” owing to errors on Nielsen’s side. During the downswing, Viacom has seen analyst downgrades and a boost in make-goods that can’t be recouped during a time when Nick is ramping up its always robust fourth-quarter ad business, when it accounts for about 25% of Viacom’s ad revenue thanks to toy ads around the holidays. Nick also is losing traction to rivals like Disney Channel, which the week of November 20 beat Nick in the ratings for the first time since August 2007. Today, Nielsen is telling the Wall Street Journal that it is revising its estimate on the number of kids who watch TV: from up 1.7% to down 2.9%. The paper said Nielsen found that it failed to “apply a standard adjustment” after Viacom questioned the numbers, but that it has nothing to do with its measurements of Nick’s ratings. That matter remains before the Media Rating Council.

7 Comments

Catherine Ormand • on Dec 5, 2011 8:48 am

All I know is that my kids (and all their friends) watch Icarly and Victorious religiously. They can’t get enough of those shows. And my husband (a tough-guy contractor type) loves to watch them WITH the kids. Comparitively, the shows my youngest daughter watches on Disney are painful in every way. IMO, as long as Nick has Icarly and Victorious they have the best that youth-oriented programming has to offer.

tv • on Dec 5, 2011 8:48 am

Your editorializing on this about Phillipe doesn’t make sense. Nielsen revised kids watching downwards (from what had been, previously, upwards)… so it actually weakens the argument by Mr. Dauman.

mkl • on Dec 5, 2011 8:48 am

I said it here before, and I will gladly repeat it. Nielsen is broken. Their methodologies are incorrect and the ‘truth’ they report is more like a general possibility. It’s impossible for them to be right given the scope of sampling and the number of variables. But the entire system is dependent on them. Much like the credit rating agencies kept giving triple A ratings to junk, Nielsen is doing the same. Sooner or later it will all come tumbling down. Or not.

Duh • on Dec 5, 2011 8:48 am

If the former iCarly vs Hannah Montana competition demonstrates anything… I could barely make it through HM (sorry Miley, you’re hot but not that hot).

But Nick doesn’t have an iCarly replacement (Victorious won’t cut it) so I’m not betting Nick.

Not that middle America gives a flying monkey shit about quality. Disney knows how to package it up and put a tiara on it so…

In any case, Deadline is spot on — how does Nielsen miss a “standard adjustment?!” Sounds like a car mechanic forgetting to put the tire back on. May be an honest mistake but are you really going to trust their oil change after that?

absolutelyanonymous • on Dec 5, 2011 8:48 am

smoke and mirrors. how does nielsen quantify demo’s of who’s watching at a given time now? hopefully not still with diaries and phone surveys. information appreciated.

jb • on Dec 5, 2011 8:48 am

with technology being what it is today, and how intrusive it is, you’d think new tv’s would have a built in technology to show what each tv is tuning into (including DVR use), and for how long.

mfan • on Dec 5, 2011 8:48 am

This is a comment based on no research, but I thought the original post was about a viewership decline among very young kids, not teenagers. That made me wonder if Spongebob was trending downward for the first time. Spongebob is such a huge part of Nickelodean that declining Spongebob ratings be a huge problem. I see that last weeks top 25 cable ratings only had two Spongebob entries.

On a personal note, I’m switching from team Disney to team Nickelodean because Miley Cyrus is developing closer ties to Paramount. Until and unless Disney moves forward with the “Wings” movie (2014?) Miley fans were waiting for, I will continue to have unpleasant thoughts about them.